Many resonate with Obama's remarks on race

President Barack Obama speaks in the Brady Press Briefing room of the White House in Washington, Friday, July 19, 2013, about the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. Obama spoke in a surprise appearance Friday at the White House, his first time appearing for a statement on the verdict since it was issued last Saturday. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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President Barack Obama speaks in the Brady Press Briefing room of the White House in Washington, Friday, July 19, 2013, about the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. Obama spoke in a surprise appearance Friday at the White House, his first time appearing for a statement on the verdict since it was issued last Saturday. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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She remembered how Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote about integration as the answer to America's racial problems.

"Well guess what?" she said. "We decided not to integrate. We decided to desegregate and we decided to end Jim Crow but we never integrated, we are not fluent in each other."

Stevenson said she wished he'd also addressed black women in his remarks.

Nolan V. Rollins, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Urban League, said that when the president of the U.S. talks about racial profiling in the first person: "It says how far we've come no question, but it also says how far we have to go."

Alexandra Grande, a 24-year-old law school student in Idaho, said Obama's remarks were compelling.

"I think he was being very diplomatic," said Grande, watching as an ethnically mixed wedding party pose for pictures at a downtown intersection. "But he also let his emotions play out, and that was interesting to see. At the end of the day, he is a man with emotions."

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AP writers Tami Abdollah in Los Angeles, Jon Gerberg in New York, and Tom Dvorak in Boise City, Idaho contributed to this report.